August Letters

By Marcia Allass
August 1, 2006

Our ST Respondent has gathered the comments our readers have sent in about the latest issues of ST and presents them here. We encourage all of our readers to chime in with a comment or two; and though we love praise and worship, we want to hear the constructive criticisms, too.

Barbarella (Features, July 2006)

Regarding the following sentence from Patti Martinson's article about Barbarella:

"No sooner than Barbarella climbs out of her ship, her clothes become shredded by rose bushes, revealing her breasts."

The revelation of the Barbarellan breasts notwithstanding, if you're writing anything as literary as a review (yes, even a review of Barbarella), you have take your own writing seriously. The phrase "no sooner than" makes no sense here, no matter how many times you may have heard it on the subway. This is not a colloquialism; it's not an idiom; it's just bad writing. You make the reader do the work of substituting:

"No sooner does Barbarella climb out of her ship, than her clothes become shredded by rose bushes, revealing her breasts."

Does Sequential Tart need a copy editor? (I work from home and my rates are reasonable.)

Obviously, you're writing stuff that's worth reading, even if you don't take me up on my offer. (But, please ... if you leave the archives on the website, correct them!)

Now, about Barbarella's breasts ...

— J M Rowland

Thank you for pointing out the error so that we can make a correction before the article goes into the archive. We have a very hardworking team of copy-editors that read through our issue every month before launch. However, as both our writers and our copy-editors have the most reasonable rates in the world (they do it in their free time and for nothing), I'm sure you can appreciate that the odd error slips through the net from time to time.

— Marcia Allass

A Brief History of Timelords (Culture Vultures, July 2006)

Very nice overview of the history of Who.

My Doctor was Jon Pertwee and then on through Tom Baker up to today and David Tennant; and I can confidently say if you liked Chris Eccleston you will love the tenth Doctor. Tennant has the madcap charm of Tom Baker mixed with a crazy punk-like exuberance making him seem like a young Paul Weller on speed.

We've just finished watching the Tenth Doctor's first series here on the BBC. There's been a strong horror bent to a number of the stories but the series finale was TV Sci-Fi all the way and the most emotionally draining piece of genre tv I've ever seen outside of a couple of recent Battlestar Galacticas.

Finally the Doctor is everything we knew he could be.

Keep watching.

— Pete Bangs

I'm glad you liked the column. It's fun to write about an obsession, which is certainly what Doctor has been for me! I haven't seen any of the Jon Pertwee episodes, but just got hold of some and am looking forward to seeing his Doctor. I don't know as many people who saw him — what did you like best?

About Tennant, I thought he was terrific in Blackpool so I think he has great potential. I've seen some of his Who episodes (we'll gloss over how) but I won't comment on them until it starts running here, so as not to spoil anything for American viewers. Plus I've only gotten through two Doctors so far!

Do keep writing back to the column because I love to know what my readers think.

Thanks!

— Kim De Vries

G.I. Joe Review (Report Card, July 2006)

Just wanted to let you know a couple things about this series you
seemed to be wondering about.

It takes place before G.I. Joe #1 in Marvel's run. Yup, back to the very beginning. Also the page count will remain the same, it's a bi-monthly series and they wanted to give Larry enough time and space to tell an epic tale.

This issue got me back into G.I. Joe big time. I have Special Missions: Tokyo reserved at my LCS when it comes in!!

— David Schmitt

Thanks for the info, David! Yeah, I know what you mean — in fact, I think the Devil's Due comics have gotten me more into Joe now than I was as a kid!

— Wolfen Moondaughter